Work It Out
by CardinalPerch
Summary: After Morgan is disturbed by a dream about Doyle's attack on Prentiss, he and Prentiss decide it is time to finally work out the lingering issues between them. Follows cannon and takes place between seasons 7 and 8. Will probably be two or three shot. M/P, but strictly friendship. Some mild language.
1. Chapter 1

This takes place between seasons 7 and 8. I wrote a oneshot somewhat along these lines a while ago, but I wasn't in love with that story and wanted to go a bit more in depth. This will probably be a two or three shot. Also, I love writing Morgan and Prentiss (though strictly in the Platonic sense). Also also, I already miss the hell out of Prentiss. Anyway, I don't own Criminal Minds or any of the characters or concepts. Hope you enjoy, and leave a review if you are so inclined…

_Morgan and the SWAT team maneuvered through the narrow halls of the warehouse as quickly as possible without being foolhardy. They weren't going fast enough for Morgan. He knew she was on the other end and that he needed to get to her now. She was dying. He didn't know how he knew this. He just did. _

_By instinct he flew down into the basement hallway and through a door to his right. There she was. Lying on the ground. Stake in her abdomen. Bleeding to death. He grabbed the radio on his Kevlar vest and called desperately for a medic. He knew time was running out._

"_Prentiss," he reaches for her hand._

"_Morgan?"_

_Her voice so week and fading._

"_Hey, it's me I'm right here. Your gonna be alright." The words poor automatically out of his mouth._

_Her eyes close, the life in her slides away._

"_Stay with me, baby. Come on, stay with me."_

"_Let me go."_

_Such a simple request. To let her go, let her die. He can't do it. He won't_

"_No. No I am not letting you go. Listen to me," he started, but stopped in mid sentence at the sight before him. Prentiss's eyes shut and her body began to convulse. Just as suddenly as the convulsing began, it stopped. She lay motionless on the floor._

"_Emily?" he prompted. "Prentiss can you hear me?"_

_Nothing. He reached out a trembling hand to her neck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing._

"_No, no, no!" he began sobbing. He made to bury his head in his hands, and that's when he saw it. The blood. Her blood. It was all over his hands. It soaked his sleeves up to his elbows. He looked around and saw that the entire floor was covered in blood. _

"_Prentiss!" he screamed. "PRENTISS!"_

Derek was jerked out of his sleep by the sound of his own scream. He looked around to take in his surroundings and was greeted by the sight of his own desk. It all came flooding back to him. He was at work. He'd had a headache and decided to take a brief snooze on the black leather couch in his office after lunch. During his nap, he dreamed about her. Again. He'd had some form of this dream on and off ever since that night the previous March when he thought he'd lost her forever. The night she "died" for seven months. Even after she came back to the BAU they continued, and they remained now that she had gone again.

She left for London in June. It was September now, over three months since the day the team saw her off at the airport. Now that Derek no longer saw her every day, no longer had her presence to reassume him that she was okay, the dreams bothered him more.

Derek was relieved by the fact that nobody seemed to have heard his outburst. He hadn't spoken to anybody about these dreams. He was afraid that if he did, Hotch would not hesitate to order him to see a Bureau psychologist. He wasn't about to let that happen.

After making a quick visit to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, Derek returned to his office determined to make some progress on the enormous pile of paperwork in his inbox. Yet try as he might, he couldn't focus on the task ahead of him. All he could think about was the dream. He half expected to look down and see his hands covered in her blood.

He stole a glance at his watch. It was two minutes past five. Technically, he was off the clock. He looked at the huge stack of paper at his desk and sighed before deciding to give it up as a bad job. Screw it, he thought, grabbing his cell phone off of the top of his desk. He had a call he needed to make.

Emily curled up on the couch in her tenth-floor West London flat, her hands wrapped around a brown ceramic mug containing freshly made hot chocolate. Rain pounded on the windows. Emily had to admit that as much as she loved London, a city that was both cosmopolitan and historical, she was a bit fed up with the constant rain. She was wearing black sweatpants and a dark blue hooded sweatshirt from Yale and was savoring her first real night off in weeks. Lately she had been putting in 16-hour days at the INTERPOL office trying to pinpoint the location of Jean Mirbeau, a French national known to be running a major sex trafficking ring throughout Europe.

Using a combination of her old profiling skills and analysis of evidence provided by police agencies throughout Europe, Emily deduced that Mirbeau was likely jumping between residences in Barcelona and Marseilles. She and Clyde contacted the appropriate Spanish and French authorities and Mirbeau had been taken down in Barcelona the previous night. Emily flew to Spain that morning with her two top subordinates – Agent Thomas Wells, an efficient Brit in his early fifties who spent twenty years in the Royal Marines before joining INTERPOL and Agent Angela Schuer, a thirty-two-year-old Oxford-educated German-American who often reminded Emily a bit of a less jaded version of herself.

They had planned on spending the day helping the authorities interrogate Mirbeau. Normally Emily's duties were confined to administration and analysis, but Mirbeau was one of INTERPOL's most hotly pursued criminals and suspected to be holding at least three recently-abducted women. Clyde wanted Emily to apply her profiling and interrogation expertise directly to the case. They both agreed that her proficiency in French would also help, as Mirbeau's understanding of Spanish was extremely poor.

It had been absurdly easy. Mirbeau was a skilled criminal but a cowardly individual. He folded after less than two hours into the interrogation and told Emily the locations of five women as well as the names and locations of his associates. The women were currently being treated in hospitals throughout Western Europe and Mirbeau was in a Spanish jail facing indictments in six countries. Authorities throughout the continent were busy tracking down the associates and breaking up one of the largest trafficking rings to be identified in several years.

Emily knew she should have been thrilled at playing a crucial role in the apprehension of such a major criminal, but the long days and whirlwind travel left her exhausted. She was looking forward to an hour or so of quiet reading before finally settling down to a full night of sleep, assuming she wasn't interrupted by nightmares, which was far from a safe assumption. She was finally working honestly with a therapist on the PTSD-like symptoms she'd been suffering ever since Doyle impaled her in Boston, but they'd only made a moderate amount of progress thus far. She still died in her dreams several times a month.

Emily reached for the Ray Bradbury novel resting on her glass coffee table right beside her service weapon. Aside from the difference in serial numbers, her new Glock 19 was indistinguishable from her old FBI sidearm. She had been quite fond of her old weapon. It never let her down in the field. She asked Clyde to make sure she received an identical firearm after her transfer to INTERPOL and he had obliged. Even when she was at home, the weapon was no more than and arm's length away at any time. It was a habit she acquired in the aftermath of Doyle and one that she was certain she would never be able to break even as she continued to make progress on hoer other nasty habit of nail-biting.

As she opened the novel to her bookmarked page a furry black object suddenly dropped onto her chest.

"Oh hey Sergio," she said, gently scratching the ears of her beloved cat. "You're probably pissed at me for being gone so much lately, huh?" Sergio offered a satisfied purr and began rubbing his face against her.

The blaring of her cell phone interrupted her rather one-sided conversation with Sergio. Emily rolled her eyes at the familiar sound. She desperately hoped that she wasn't being called into the office. As nice as it often was to have the decision-making authority that came with being the highest-ranking INTERPOL agent permanently stationed in the British Isles, the job came with more late-night phone calls than even the BAU had. Emily scrambled to reach the phone, which she had accidentally left in the kitchen. In her haste, she managed to spill half a mug of hot chocolate on her foot.

"Dammit," she muttered, scrambling toward the phone, instinctively shoving the Glock into her pocket as she went. She didn't even have time to check the caller ID before answering.

"Chief Prentiss, INTERPOL," she answered automatically.

"Well, hello chief," she heard a wonderfully familiar voice answer sarcastically. "Please tell me you're not still at work. If my calculations are correct, it's past 10 over there."

"Hey, Morgan," she replied happily. "Thankfully no, I am not at work at the moment. Although I feel like this is the only time I've been able to say that in ages."

"Yeah, I heard you wrapped up a pretty big case today. Congrats," he answered.

"Thanks. How'd you hear about that?" she asked, a bit perplexed.

"I ran into Andi Swan from the Human Trafficking Unit in the cafeteria this afternoon. Since a couple of the abducted victims were from the States she was following the case," he answered. "She said this was a huge bust."

"Yeah, the guy was responsible for a lot of bad stuff," she confirmed. "I just hope we can help track down as many victims as possible. But enough about work crap. How are you?"

"I'm good," he answered, half-truthfully. "Missing you, of course."

"I miss you guys too," she said gently. "How is everybody? I talked to JJ briefly a few days ago, but because of that case it's been a couple of weeks since I've talked to any of the others. I'm sure Garcia is ready to kill me."

"You know, she did mention something the other day about freezing your bank account until you called her," he laughed. "But honestly, everybody's good. Reid just got back from visiting his Mom in Vegas, and Henry and Jack both seem to be growing faster than ever. We're supposed to have a new agent joining us soon."

"It's been three months and they're just now hiring my replacement?" she asked, surprised.

"Hey now, don't go using that r word. There is no replacement for Emily Prentiss," Derek teased. "But yeah, they're just now getting around to filling that position. And it's about time too. I have annual leave time coming my way and I wasn't sure they were going to let me take it if we didn't get a sixth profiler on the team soon. Now enough about us, how are you doing?"

"Pretty good, other than being insanely busy. The London office has a lot of good people. I'm hoping to eventually get out a little bit more, but when the hell have any of us had time for a personal life anyway?"

"I hear you there," he answered. "I'm just glad you are doing alright."

Emily sensed the slightest of irregularities in Morgan's voice at this last comment. It was barely there, but there all the same.

"Morgan," she said in a knowing tone. "Is everything okay? You didn't just call me for a spontaneous chat, did you?"

"Dammit Prentiss," he said, defeated. "You're not supposed to be a profiler anymore."

"Technically true, but for better or worse I think that shit stays with you for life," she observed. "So spit it out, Morgan. What's bugging you?"

"It's nothing," he hesitated. "It's just…I had this dream about you, and I just needed to hear your voice so I knew you were okay."

"It was about Doyle, wasn't it? About that night in Boston?" she demanded, but not insensitively.

"Yeah," he admitted.

"How often have you been having them?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes, please."

"Ever since that day," he confessed. "I just knew I couldn't mention it to you without risking it affecting our performance in the field. Which I know is the exact same reason why you couldn't tell us everything you were really going through while you were in hiding and after you came back. That, and the fact that you still felt so guilty about all of it that you didn't want to bring it up because you thought it might hurt us."

"Okay, now who's profiling?" she asked.

"Emily, you know it's true."

"It is," she admitted. "I knew I could never talk honestly to anybody about all of that as long as I was still working for the FBI. But being there meant I was constantly reminded of it. It just wasn't a sustainable situation for me."

"Well, you're not at the FBI anymore," he observed.

"No, I'm not," she agreed. "Maybe it's about time we talked about all of this."

"I think that's a good idea."

"You know this isn't going to be easy," she warned. "For either one of us."

"I know that. But I also know that I care about you too much to let that stop me, and I know you feel the same."

"Fair enough," she answered. "You've got yourself a deal. I'll get in touch with you tomorrow and we'll figure out a time to have a long talk this weekend."

"Sounds good," he answered. "Take care of yourself until then."

"I will," she promised. "But stop worrying about me. I'm alright."

"I'll try. Goodnight Prentiss."

"Love you Morgan. Bye"


	2. Chapter 2

_I apologize for my tardiness. This was originally part of a larger chapter that I decided to break up because it was becoming unwieldy. Consequently, this chapter is more of a set-up than anything terribly substantive. In happier news, it also means the next update SHOULD come more quickly._

_Also, I've had a few people ask if I would consider turning this into a more-than-friendship story. I won't do that for two reasons. First, I've never really been into shipping any of the characters on the show. Just a personal preference. Second, I am terrible at writing romantic stuff. This would turn into a cornball fest really fast if I tried to write it as a romantic pairing. Anyway, sorry to disappoint anybody. Happy reading!_

Derek and Emily made plans to speak that Saturday at noon, Washington time. Yet events conspired against them. Before the weekend arrived, the BAU was called to investigate a string of murders in Lexington that looked like the work of an intelligent and organized UnSub – an almost certain omen that the case would not be an easy one. Judging by the content and brevity of Derek's e-mails, it looked as if the team had made frustratingly little progress during the early days of the case.

Emily, meanwhile, was quickly back to working sixteen-hour days and seven-day weeks after Scotland Yard learned that a suspected Al-Qaeda associate disappeared at Heathrow Airport during a layover on a trip from Yemen to Boston. British and American authorities had requested INTERPOL assistance. Emily worked the entire weekend and overtime on Monday and Tuesday tracking the suspect's recent whereabouts, which meant spending a lot of time on the phone with authorities in countries in and around the Arabian Peninsula, many of whom were unsurprisingly reluctant about cooperating. Yet Emily, who was pleased to discover her Arabic was nowhere near as rusty as she'd feared, was able to garner with relative certainty that the associate in question was still in Yemen.

After she presented this information, Scotland Yard discovered that the man who disappeared from Heathrow was not the Al-Qaeda associate in question but simply a student who had the misfortune of sharing a name with the terrorist. Furthermore, he hadn't gone missing from Heathrow at all. He'd landed at Logan Airport in Boston as planned, with all necessarily documentation. A simple record-keeping error by a U.S. Border Patrol officer was responsible for the fact that British authorities never became aware of the man's arrival in the United States.

Emily resisted the temptation to spend Wednesday morning on the phone ripping a new one to Scotland Yard and U.S. Homeland Security, but she thought better of it. She knew she would have to work frequently with both organizations in the future and didn't feel like souring the relationships just yet. Nonetheless, she was in an irritable mood that she was barely managing to conceal with the help of coffee. She had quit drinking coffee over a year ago and knew she would regret it later, but considering that she had spent 12 of the last 14 days working 16 hours or more, she felt an exception was justified.

Emily was working on routine paper work on what the desperately hoped would be a routine day (whatever that meant anymore) when one of her agents strode through her office door just before noon.

"Chief Prentiss, you have a visitor," the young, dark-haired many said in a crisp southeastern English accent.

"Just a moment please, Preston," she answered. "I need to issue a Green Notice on this Villa case."

"Understood," Agent Preston answered. "But I thought you might want to know that your visitor is an Agent Morgan from the American FBI. Your old stomping grounds, if I'm not mistaken. He seems to know you quite well."

Emily quickly lifted her head at Preston's comment.

"Morgan?" she demanded, slightly incredulously.

"That's what he said," Preston confirmed. "Big, strapping fellow. Dark complexion."

"Send him in, please," she answered. "And if you wouldn't mind asking Schuer or Wells to take care of this Green Notice. I don't think I gave them anything particularly taxing to do today."

"Of course. I'll let you know if there's some sort of problem."

"Thanks Preston."

A few moments later in walked Derek Morgan, clad in blue jeans and a white, long-sleeved muscle shirt. She hadn't seen him in three and a half months, but he looked no different than he had on the day she left.

"Nice office," he said, impressed.

Emily had to admit, she did quite like her new office. She had a spacious black wooden desk and new carpet. In the corner, four comfortable leather armchairs surrounded a coffee table and a stainless steel refrigerator. The space was supposed to be designated for meeting with "important officials," something Emily avoided doing as much as humanly possible. She'd had her share of important officials growing up as a diplomat's child. The entire front wall of the office was constructed from glass panels, giving her office plenty of light and allowing her a view of her agents working on the floor below.

"Thanks," she answered. "Although I kind of feel like Hitler perched up here, lording over everybody below."

She moved toward him and they wrapped each other in a warm embrace, the kind shared by family members who have been apart for far too long.

"It's good to see you," she said.

"Oh, you have no idea how good it is to see you," he answered. "You look great."

"You too, as always. Still doing your thousand crunches a day?"

"You know it," he teased. "I want only the best for the ladies."

"There is something different about you, though," she observed. She wasn't quite able to put her finger on what struck her as different about him.

"Really?" he asked curiously.

She nodded silently, considering his appearance for another moment. Then it clicked.

"I think this is the first time I've ever seen you without a gun."

"Yeah, they wouldn't let me bring it with me because I'm on vacation instead of on assignment. They must have pretty strict gun laws over here," he commented, with more than a hint of annoyance.

"That they do," she agreed. "But you said you're on vacation? What happened to that case in Lexington?"

"We tracked the guy down. Ended with a suicide by cop," he sighed. "One of the local field office agents ended up having to be the one to do it. He was a little bit shaken up but he's alright. When we got back to Quantico, Blake – the new agent – was ready to start work, so I put in for my annual leave."

"I see," she observed. "And I don't suppose it's a coincidence you chose London of all places to spend your time off?"

"I just figured as long as we're going to try and work all of this out we should have a real talk, face-to-face," he answered. "Besides, it's been too long since I've seen you."

"But don't you usually spend your annual leave in Chicago, with your family?"

"I called my mom and let her know I was coming here. She understands. I need to be with my other family right now."

Emily smiled gently. She knew she would consider the BAU team her family as long as she lived. She also knew they felt the same, but it was still good to hear it after the months of separation.

"Alright, tell you what," she said. "I need to wrap up a few things here, but I can be done in a few hours."

"You're in charge here, can't you just leave?" he teased.

"Unfortunately being 'in charge' tends to mean I never get to leave," she replied, only half in jest. "But I'll make an exception for you. Why don't you go check out some sights and meet me back here at four? I know a place close by where we can get something good to eat and have some privacy. Servers here tend to leave people alone unless asked."

"We don't have to go out anywhere," Derek replied. "I just figured we could go to your place if you wa…" Derek stopped himself midsentence. Of course she didn't want to go back to her flat, he reprimanded himself. He wasn't sure exactly how their conversation tonight would go, but he was sure it would bring back a lot of painful memories for both of them. She needed a barrier between those painful memories and her new home.

"You know what, food actually sounds good," he said.

As ever, Emily had kept her features composed, not wanting to show how much she was bothered by the idea of having a painful conversation in her own home. But Derek thought he saw the slightest indication of relief and gratitude at his change of mind.

"Great, I'll see you in little bit. Just come back through the same entrance. Agent Preston will know to let you in."

"Don't bail on me to take some case in Germany or something," he admonished her.

"Wouldn't dream of it. Have fun, and behave," she warned him sarcastically. "Because I am not standing between you and immigration if you get in trouble for trying to sleep with every woman in London."

…

A few hours later, Derek rode shotgun with Emily as the pair drove away from the INTERPOL office and towards the restaurant.

As she drove, Emily recalled that the last time she'd driven with Morgan beside her in the passenger seat, he'd blown out her eardrum by firing an MP5 in the SUV during a case in Texas. She had hearing problems on an off for two months afterwards, but never told anybody; she didn't want Hotch to take her off field duty.

Now that day in Texas felt like something that happened in another lifetime. In many ways it was.

They left her office a little later than intended; Derek had gotten lost on the Underground.

"I leave you unsupervised for four hours and you get lost," she harassed him.

"Hey now, don't blame me. Stuff is confusing around here."

"Yeah, Morgan. It's an enormous city in a country you've never been in before. You can't just 'vibe it.' That's why the Underground has these things called maps."

"Hey now, watch it," he replied. "I found my way back didn't I? And like I said, stuff is crazy here. Like this driving on the wrong side of the road thing you're doing right now. It's just not right. It's freaking me out a little bit."

"You're scared?" she teased.

"I'm not scared, it's just weird."

"Well, you get used to it eventually," she said. "We're almost there anyway."

Five minutes later, Emily parked on the side of the street near a moderate sized American-style bar and grill.

"The owner's from Philadelphia," Emily sad in answer to Derek's unspoken question. "The burgers are as good as you're going to get in this neck of the woods, and I know you like your burgers."

"What, no pub food?" he asked.

"Not a fan," she admitted. "Although you're welcome to try it sometime this week at your own risk."

The two made their way into the restaurant and secured seating at a corner table. That, and the fact that the restaurant was otherwise crowded and fairly loud afforded them a desired level of privacy. They both ordered a steak burger and Derek opted for a beer while Emily ordered a water. This was a bit unusual for her, as was the fact that she specifically asked that there not be any tomato or pickles put on her burger, something he'd never noticed before.

"Prentiss, what's with the sudden anti-beer and pickle kick?" he asked.

"Nothing, I just didn't feel like any tonight," she answered hurriedly, not quite meeting his eye. "So, did you get to see _anything_ today?"

"Yeah, I saw Big Ben and all that stuff. Way cooler than it looked watching the Olympics."

"I didn't have you pegged as an Olympics guy," Emily admitted.

"When I'm in some God-forsaken hotel in the middle of Nebraska and I can't sleep, I'm a whatever-is-on-TV guy," he replied.

"Fair enough."

Their conversation was interrupted briefly by the arrival of a server with their food. After the man left, Derek took a deep swig from his beer and stared intently at Emily.

"So, you said nobody will come an bother us for awhile now?"

"Yep," she confirmed. "They'll leave us be for at least a couple hours."

"Alright then, Prentiss. Let's talk."

_So, again, more substantive stuff to come. Leave a review if so inclined!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Sooooo….this is (a) ridiculously long and (b) ridiculously late. For that I apologize. I just couldn't find a good chapter break point, and I really wanted to flesh out everything that I imagined happened while Emily was "dead." Also, I just wanted to write a crap ton of Prentiss dialogue because the promos for the Season 8 Premier sans Prentiss sent me into severe withdrawals. This is my coping mechanism…_

"Let's talk," Emily agreed. "You flew across the ocean for this, so you first. What do you want to talk about?"

"How do you like your new job?" Derek asked, biting into his burger.

"Excuse me?" she asked incredulously, a slightly dumbfounded look on her face.

"It's a simple question, Prentiss," Derek chuckled. "How do you like your job?"

"Sorry," Emily answered. "I guess I was expecting something a little more pressing."

"We've got plenty of time for all of that," Derek assured her. "But right now we're eating. And this is a pretty good burger. I'd hate to let it get cold. So let's keep it simple. How's the job?"

"Well," Emily answered after taking a bit of her own, "you know I miss working with you guys. Every day. And the hours are hell. Worse than the BAU. But honestly, other than that it's good. The agents in the office are all good, competent people, and I have to admit it's kind of nice to call the shots for a change."

"I bet it is," Derek said a bit enviously.

"Oh, come on, Morgan. You and I both know that if you really wanted it the FBI would find a team or a field office to put you in charge of."

"I hope you're right," he answered. "Maybe someday. But not yet. Anyway, so you like it?"

"Yeah, I do," she said slowly.

"Well that doesn't exactly sound sincere," Derek remarked.

"It's just," she hesitated. "I do like it, honestly, but I don't _love _it like I loved my job those first years in the BAU, or even in my earlier stint with the CIA and INTERPOL. Even with all of the horrible crap we dealt with, I was excited about the people I worked with and the work we did. I still like this work now, but there's just something that's not there anymore. And it hasn't been there since the day Doyle came back."

Derek sighed.

"Why did you come back?" he asked. "You're really smart. You speak like six languages. You could do anything you want to. Why are you still doing this kind of work?"

"Because I have to," she answered.

"No," Derek replied. "No, no, no. You are not getting away with that, Prentiss. You're the most evasive person I know but even for you that's too much of a non-answer for me to let slide. Be real with me, now. Why are you still doing this?"

"For the same reason Hotch came back after Foyet," she answered.

"Okay, now you lost me," Derek said. "Explain."

"Even though I wasn't that surprised when Hotch came back, I still wondered why, and I know you did too. That job cost him the woman he loved. It almost cost him his son. He had the chance to walk away and spend time with Jack, but he came back. I couldn't understand it then, but now I do. He needed to beat Foyet. If he quit, Foyet would win again. He would beat him just like Frank beat Gideon. Now every time Hotch catches an UnSub, he takes another George Foyet out of the world. Every time I catch a terrorist or a murderer, I take another Doyle out of the world. If I quit, Doyle wins, again."

"He never won, Emily," Derek said adamantly. "You survived, he's gone. You beat him."

"After he murdered three members of my old team and completely destroyed my life," she retorted, a bit angrily. "If that's a victory then it seems pretty damn hollow."

Derek sighed yet again, reprimanding himself for not thinking a little more about how she must feel about Doyle. Of course it didn't feel like a win to her, he thought, and maybe it shouldn't. It had cost her so much.

Emily, meanwhile, immediately regretted her outburst. She knew all along this conversation was going to be difficult, but she didn't want to fight with Derek. That was the very last thing she wanted. Though she was frustrated with Derek for being a bit callous, she realized she wasn't being fair to him. She couldn't possibly expect him, or anybody else, to understand. She tried to steer the conversation back into safer territory.

"I will say, though, this job involves a lot more analysis and not as much field work, so that part has been kind of nice."

"I thought you loved field work," Derek exclaimed, surprised.

"I do. It's just that the aftermath is harder to deal with now. I can still chase guys down and take a hit as well as ever, but these days I'm a little sorer and more sluggish on the day after than I used to be. I'm not getting any younger," she observed.

"Hey now, watch it," Derek answered. "You're only a couple of years older than me."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better I think a lot of it has nothing to do with age," she admitted. "You know as well as just about anybody that I've wracked up a few bumps and bruises for the past few years."

That was the understatement of the century, Derek thought. He couldn't think of anybody else in the BAU who'd suffered as much physical punishment as she had over the past five or six years; even Reid and Hotch hadn't had it quite as bad. The woman had been beaten, hit by a truck, stabbed. Hell, just earlier this year she'd gotten shot when the BAU was working a case in California. It stood to reason that this would produce some nagging pain over time, particularly after the more physically demanding days. He just hadn't thought about it because Prentiss had always been too tough to let on.

He did often catch himself wondering what exactly Doyle had put her through. When he found her that night, his immediate concern had obviously been the massive stake sticking out of her gut, but he could tell from her face alone that that was only part of the hell she'd been through. She didn't have that bloody nose and cut, swollen face because of a stab wound in the abdomen. But Derek knew better than to ask her about what happened. He knew she would never tell him, and deep down he suspected he didn't really want to know.

Derek finished his burger and took another swig of beer to wash it down. As he watched Emily take a drink from her glass of water, he couldn't help but ask again. It was too weird. He had to know.

"Prentiss, I gotta know. Why aren't you drinking a beer? You love beer more than anyone I know, maybe a little too much."

"I'm driving," she said quickly, again failing to meet his eye.

"Yeah, in a few hours. And I'm talking about one drink. It's not like it can hurt anyth…," he stopped midsentence. "Wait. Oh my God, you're not having a kid, are you?"

Emily couldn't help but laugh at the shocked look on Derrick's face.

"No," she snorted, before the grin on her face disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. "I, uh, I can't have any kids."

Derek misunderstood her.

"Come on, Prentiss. Look I know it seems impossible with the job and all right now, but if you find the right guy…"

"No, Morgan," she interrupted, again smiling at her friend's befuddlement despite the anguish it was causing her inside. "I really _can't _have kids. Incidentally, for the same reason I won't drink beer anymore," she added with the slightest hint of bitterness.

From Derrick's wide-eyed look she could tell he wasn't catching on. Though she would rather talk about almost anything else, she was going to have to explain.

"When somebody stabs you in the midsection with a giant piece of wood it can screw up a lot of things, especially if the wood splinters on its way in, which in my case it apparently did," she said, licking her lower lip. Derek noticed she'd started absentmindedly picking at her fingernails as well. "Some of those things it can screw up are your intestines and reproductive organs, and, while surgeons may be able to fix things well enough to keep you alive, they can't fix them well enough to make them work right again. So, no beer because alcohol can further irritate my gastrointestinal crap, and no kids because I can't. Oh, and also the beer is acidic, and the stress of this gave me one mother of an ulcer. That's the real reason why I quit coffee, too, and the reason for no pickles."

Derek looked as if he'd been slapped across the face. He wasn't sure which shocked him more, what she'd told him, or the relatively matter-of-fact way in which she said it.

"But you drank beer when you came back," he finally managed to sputter. "I saw you a couple of times. And that night you went out with JJ and Garcia before Hotch's triathlon, I _know _ya'll drank something that night."

"You would have noticed if I quit," she said simply. "I knew that as long as we were all working together you guys couldn't be thinking about Doyle all of the time. And I knew if I changed a bunch of my habits because I was hurt, that's exactly what you would think about all of the time, so I sucked it up as much as I could. Trust me, it hurt like hell afterward, but when you're drunk you don't notice, and after that I just had to grin and bear it. I take medication for this stuff too, so it's not like I was completely helpless."

Derek was amazed by the lengths she went to in order to cover these things up. They'd all realized she'd changed since she came back, but the Emily Prentiss who was unfazed by injuries and fought against taking painkillers even after beatings, car accidents, and gunshot wounds was still there. Derek had no idea that for the last year she'd been on a prescription regimen and even a simple drink was causing her pain. He wondered how big of a role that had played in her decision to leave, but he knew he'd never find out. The woman was damn good at hiding things.

"Did you tell _anybody _about this stuff?" he asked in amazement.

"Well, obviously my doctor knew, and I told Reid about the ulcer, but otherwise no," she answered.

"Look," she said. "I've made my peace with it. Besides, there was no way I would have had kids after all of that anyway. I don't think a day has passed since then that I haven't been thankful I didn't have any children. He would have killed them. It was bad enough that he threatened you guys, but my kids…" her voice trailed off. "I would never take the risk of that happening."

"Emily," Derek said softly. "There's nobody to come after you anymore. Doyle is dead."

"Not to me."

"Emily," he paused. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry this happened to you."

"It's not your fault," she said firmly.

"I know. I know it's not. But I'm still sorry."

"All things considered, it's not that bad," she answered. "It could have been worse. I would have died if you hadn't found me in time. You saved my life. Why don't you give yourself some credit for a change instead of beating yourself up?"

"It wasn't me," Morgan insisted. "That was a team effort by a whole lot of people who care about you. I just happened to be the one to see you first. And quite frankly for seven months that felt like a hell of a curse."

She swallowed.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah," he said softly.

"Why did you come here?"

"What do you mean? I came here to talk to you."

"I know that. I know you've wanted to have a talk for a long time. But the entire time we've been sitting here you haven't told me the reason why. You haven't asked the one question you really want to ask."

"And you know what that question is?" he asked bit skeptically.

"You want to know if all of this was really necessary. You need to know if there was any other way. Because truthfully, you haven't forgiven Hotch and JJ. And as glad as you may be that I'm alive, you haven't quite forgiven me either. You don't trust us like you used to. Two years ago you never would have gotten on Hotch's case about Strauss or been worried about me performing simple take down procedures in the field. The only way you can trust us again is if you know we had no choice. If you know why we had to do what we did."

Morgan exhaled heavily.

"You always were good."

"What I can't figure out is why you didn't ask a long time ago."

"That's the easy part," he answered. "I never asked JJ because I knew that if she wouldn't tell Reid everything that happened then she definitely wouldn't tell me. I never asked Hotch because I know he would just tell me that this isn't about me and I need to trust that the right call was made and get over it. And I couldn't ask you because I knew that it would make you feel more guilty than you already felt, which would just make it that much harder for us to work together again."

"But now I'm not at the BAU anymore."

"Exactly. I gotta know. I'm sorry, but it's not good enough to hear that it was necessary. I have to know why. I have to know exactly how those decisions were made. And I need to hear it from you, because you were there the whole time."

"Morgan, you do realize I'm under oath to both the CIA and INTERPOL not to speak a word about any of this?"

"Come on Prentiss, don't pull that bullshit on me," Morgan said bitterly. "You and I have put our lives in each other's hands for five years. I endured seven months of hell believing you were dead while you were really just a seven-hour flight away. Screw oaths. We've been through too much that to stand in the way. I deserve to know the truth."

"Which is why I'm going to tell you the truth, but only on two conditions. You cannot repeat what I am about to tell you to anybody else. Not Reid, not Rossi, not Garcia, not even JJ and Hotch. Even they don't know everything that happened after you guys left Boston. If anybody else really wants to know, they can come to me themselves. And please don't ask me about what happened in that warehouse. I'm not going to talk about it. It'll only make you upset, and I don't particularly care to think about it any more than I already do."

Emily had to stop herself from absentmindedly placing her hand over the spot on her chest where the clover brand burned.

"Okay," he replied. "Deal. Now tell me what happened."

"Well, I can't tell you everything that happened that night and the first few days afterwards because I wasn't awake for most of it. All I can remember are flashes. I remember seeing you and I remember bits and pieces of the ambulance ride. I remember coding and then coming back. It still doesn't seem real sometimes."

"You remember seeing me?" he interrupted. He was surprised she was actually able to remember any of that considering how much trauma she suffered that night. He'd assumed she'd pieced things together from what JJ and Hotch told her.

"Only parts of it," she admitted. "It's really incoherent and fragmented. Like seeing a bunch of film clips without ever seeing the movie."

"Do you remember me asking you to squeeze my hand?" he asked.

"No," she said quietly.

Derek wasn't surprised. By that point her consciousness was all but gone. For a terrible second he'd actually believed she'd died in his arms before he felt the faintest of squeezes from her slender fingers.

"Do you remember what you said to me?"

She frowned and narrowed her eyebrows as she struggled to recall. Then her eyes widened as realization dawned.

"Let me go," she said.

"Prentiss, that has bothered me every single day since. Why did you tell me that? Did you want to die?"

"No," she said adamantly. "That wasn't it. I didn't _want _to die. But I thought I was going to. And I accepted that. I guess I just wanted you to accept it too, so you wouldn't blame yourself."

"Like I would ever be able to accept it."

"I'm sorry I said that to you. It wasn't fair."

"Hey, it's alright," he grinned, trying to make the unpleasant admission as painless as possible. "I have a personal policy of not holding my friends liable for things they say when they have a two-by-four stuck in their gut."

He was pleased that his comment elicited a laugh from her. She hardly ever laughed anymore. It was good to hear it again.

"So, what do you remember after that?"

"I don't remember anything at all from the hospital in Boston. I actually don't remember anything from the next three days. I know that I was stabilized in Boston, put in a medically-induced coma, and airlifted to the ICU at the Naval hospital in Bethesda. I remember waking up a few days later and being really confused and in a lot of pain. I knew right away that I was in a hospital, but it took me awhile to remember why."

Derek was watching her intently, not wishing to interrupt, so she continued.

"When I figured out I was in a military hospital I was really confused, but I was heavily drugged and on a ventilator, so I couldn't ask any questions. The doctors and nurses just kept telling me that somebody would be with me soon to explain everything. I honestly don't know how long it was, but eventually a guy in a suit showed up. He identified himself as a CIA counter-terrorism chief. He told me that Doyle had escaped and was off the grid again, and that for my own safety and the safety of the FBI agents and surviving INTERPOL agents who worked with me on either of the Doyle cases I'd been declared dead in Boston. Besides JJ and Hotch all of my friends and family believed I'd been killed in the line of duty and my funeral was going to be held the next day. I was to remain in the hospital anonymously in secure isolation until I recovered. Then I would be relocated and assigned a false identity which I was to keep until Doyle was caught."

"So Hotch didn't make the call?" Derek interjected. "The CIA did?"

"Yeah, there was no way Hotch was going to get to make the call. Nobody in the FBI was. The work I did for INTERPOL and the CIA was part of an anti-terrorism program that is still officially classified. So even though I transferred out in 2005 they can exercise authority over me anytime they think it necessary. Their authority over me superseded that of the FBI, and I'm sure that even now it still technically supersedes that of INTERPOL. Anyway, as soon as they found out I went AWOL they dispatched agents to Boston to try and intercept me. When they heard what happened and that Doyle had escaped they decided that if I survived nobody could know. Hotch had no choice in the matter. They wouldn't have told him and JJ about it at all if not for the fact that they needed people connected with the BAU to make it look convincing."

"So what did you do when this guy told you all of this?" Derek asked. He needed to know whether she had accepted it docilely or if she had put up a fight for herself and for her family. If she had fought to be allowed to tell them the truth.

"I got pissed off and tried to jump out of bed and fight with him," she answered nonchalantly. "Admittedly not the best decision, but between having post-concussion syndrome and being on drugs I wasn't in a clear state of mind. All I managed to do is almost choke myself on the ventilator and rip half my stiches open. The last thing I remember about that is a small army of orderlies trying to pin me down to sedate me. I must have put up a halfway decent fight, though, because when I woke from the sedatives they had me in restraints."

Derek detected a note of pride in Emily's voice at this last comment, and he couldn't help but be amused. He was also glad. While he felt bad that Emily had hurt herself, he was glad she didn't take her orders lying down. She hadn't just submitted to lying to the team, to him.

"After that, the hospital personnel told me that the agent was going to come back the next day to speak with me again, and if I tried to attack him again they'd detain me indefinitely. When he came back he explained that I was going to have to convalesce in the hospital until I recovered all of my mental and physical faculties and was well enough to travel and to defend myself if necessary. Then I would be taken to Europe on an Agency plane and be assigned three different identities what I was to alternate at random. By this time I realized that they were right about having to make Doyle believe I was dead. It was the only way to keep you guys safe. But I still didn't like lying about it. I wanted to be able to at least tell you guys the truth. I knew you'd be able to keep the secret, even if you didn't particularly like it. So I asked the agent, relatively politely, what exactly he intended to do if I didn't hold to that part of the deal."

Derek scoffed. He suspected that "relatively politely" meant that Emily basically told the agent to screw off.

"What'd he say?" he asked.

"He told me I had two choices. I could follow orders, keep my mouth shut, go to Europe and hope that Doyle was caught so Emily Prentiss could come back to life, or I could refuse to follow orders, in which case I would be incarcerated in a military prison for the rest of my life, and Emily Prentiss would stay dead to the world. So that was that. I spent six weeks in the hospital, and then I left the country."

"They were going to put you in prison?" Derek asked, perplexed.

"Yep."

"Can they even do that?"

"Legally, probably not, but practically speaking I have no doubt."

"So you really didn't have a choice?"

"No, I didn't. And Derek, I didn't ask, but I am absolutely certain they threatened JJ and Hotch too. If not with prison, then at the very least they threatened to take their jobs, and those two have kids to think about."

Derek nodded.

"I get it. It's screwed up. Totally screwed up. But I get it."

"There's something still bothering you," Emily observed.

"Yeah, there is," he confessed. "I get now why you had to lie about being gone. But Prentiss, I still don't get why you had to do any of this in the first place. Why did you go after Doyle alone instead of telling us the truth? We would have gotten over the whole undercover lover bit. We could have helped you, and you didn't let us."

"I told you, he would have killed you."

"Emily, we're FBI agents, there are plenty of precautions we could have taken to make sure nothing happened."

"Morgan, you don't get it. It wouldn't have worked."

"Why are you so sure about that?" he asked, slightly annoyed by her legendary stubbornness.

"Do you remember the last case we worked before Doyle? The one with the autistic child in Louisiana?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"The night we got home from that case, I met Doyle at a park in D.C. I knew he'd want to meet, and I knew where he'd be expecting me. At that point I knew he was looking for me, but I wasn't sure about what he wanted. When I saw him, he told me that he was going to kill me for what I did. He didn't do it then and there because he wanted me to suffer first. He wanted me to know I was going to kill him and there was nothing I could do."

"Surely you had your gun on you, why didn't you just take him out?" Derek asked.

Emily smiled lightly, remembering the night a year and a half before when Clyde asked her the exact same question. Hell, it was a question she herself had asked Doyle.

"You saw how many guys he had working with him," she answered. "Do you really think I would have gotten three steps away before one of them put a bullet in my head?"

"But that wasn't the only thing," she said, swallowing hard. The fear she felt that night was still fresh in her mind. "He knew where all of you were that night, everybody on the team. And he told me he would kill you if I got you involved."

"Wait," Derek interjected. "What do you mean he knew where we were?"

"I mean he had people watching your exact location. He knew Reid was riding the Metro home. He knew Hotch was at home with Jack. He knew Rossi and Seaver were playing video games in Rossi's office, and he knew that you and Garcia were watching a movie in your office."

Derek couldn't stop his jaw from dropping. He _had_ been watching a move with Garcia that night. And he remembered overhearing Rossi and Seaver trash talking in the office just down the hall.

"So what was I supposed to do?" she asked. "What would you have done?"

Derek pictured all of them in his mind. Seaver dead. Rossi dead. Hotch dead. Reid dead. His Baby Girl dead. And obviously it wasn't too much of a stretch to picture Prentiss dead.

"I would have done what you did," he answered firmly.

"Well Morgan, there you have it. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I'm sorry it came much later than you deserved."

"Prentiss, you owe me an apology for nothing. Do you understand that? Nothing. You went through all of this hell for us."

"I would do it again. I would have done more if I had to."

"I'm glad you didn't," Derek said, reaching across the table to take the hand of the friend he trusted again. The friend whose actions he at last understood. The friend who went through hell to protect the people she loved and then bent over backwards to try and make life seem normal again until things finally reached the point where even she couldn't do it anymore.

"Me too."

"Alright," he said smiling. "Let's get out of here. I still have six days of vacation left, and I need to find a hotel."

"Don't be stupid," she said. "You're staying with me."

"Hey, hey. Party time!" he joked.

"Don't get any ideas. You take the pullout bed in the living room. And behave, some of us still have to go to work."

"Oh Prentiss, that's just cold."

As he followed her out the door and back to the car, he couldn't help but think that for the first time in well over a year, things felt normal again. Even if they were driving on the wrong side of the road.

_Fin._

_I hope that wasn't too terrible. Also, I apologize for grammar/spelling errors. I try to proofread, but I notice that I miss things from time to time. This story is probably no exception._


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